New meth lab cleanup program in Kalamazoo, a first in Michigan, will help manage costs as federal funds dry up

Fritz Klug / Kalamazoo GazetteMatt Schemenauer, an investigator with the Kalamazoo Valley Enforcement Team, adds chemicals to a beaker Monday at a new site that will be used to store neutralized chemicals used in meth labs. Local police officers are being trained in procedures to test common chemicals used in making meth.

KALAMAZOO — Dipping pH strips into beakers of acetone, Coleman fuel, hydrogen peroxide, sulfuric acid and lye, officers from law enforcement agencies in Kalamazoo and Van Bu­ren counties tested the acidity of the chemicals on Monday.

It was training they soon will put to use. They will not just be respond­ing to calls involving methamphet­amine labs and calling in cleanup companies; they will be playing an active role in dismantling them.

The program was prompted by a decision by the Drug Enforcement Administration in February to stop providing funding to local law en­forcement agencies for meth-lab cleanups that can run between $1,000 and $5,000 per lab, depending on their size, said Capt. Jon Uribe.

He heads KVET, a drug interdic­tion team for Kalamazoo County and said it is the first program of its type in Michigan.

“We needed to do something to save money,” Uribe said.

KVET had 130 meth cleanups in 2010, Uribe said. Without the new program, it was likely facing be­tween $100,000 and $500,000 a year in cleanup costs.

Under the new program, KVET will put the components into secured, 55-gallon drums, which can hold ma­terials from a minimum of 100 labs. Each mass disposal of the materials will cost $2,000.

Fritz Klug / Kalamazoo GazetteJim Harrison, of the Kalamazoo County Sherriff's Office, and Matt Schemenauer don gas masks during training for officers who will use KVET's new container site to store neutralized chemicals from meth lab busts.

Four agencies involved

That cost of disposal also will be shared by each of the four agen­cies involved in the program — the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office, the Portage Police Department, the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office and the Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety, which runs KVET. Each agency also will have to pay for its own equipment.

Officers from the participating agencies began training on handling meth labs May 9 and should be fin­ished Wednesday. The program is expected to be operational in mid- to late July.

When it was first announced that the DEA would stop funding meth­lab disposals, Uribe would approach owners of properties where meth labs were discovered and tell them that, under the Environmental Protection Act, they were financially responsible for the cleanup and that they had to show proof a contractor performed the work. But because of the expense to property owners, compliance has been nonexistent, he said.

“I’ve never seen a dollar come back,” he said of reimbursement for KVET cleanups.

Uribe began looking for an alterna­tive and found a program started by the Kentucky State Police Academy in 1998.

When officers arrive at the scene of a meth lab, they segregate and charac­terize the components based on fac­tors of injectivity, toxicity, reactivity an corrosivity.

‘A step-by-step process’

“There’s a step-by-step process for each one of the four characteriza­tions,” Uribe said. The officers then neutralize the components as much as possible to reduce their hazard level and trans­port the chemicals as non-regulated waste.

If officers encounter a lab they can­not neutralize, they call in a private contractor.

The first 15 area officers who began training for
meth-lab neutralization in May already had DEA Clandestine Drug Lab
training and knowledge about dismantling labs. Three of those officers
were from Portage, two from the Kalamazoo County Sheriff’s Office,
three from the Van Buren County Sheriff’s Office and seven from KDPS.
There will be another training session in the fall, Uribe said.

Some kind of mutual aid agreement will be developed
between the agencies involved for occasions when one doesn’t have enough
officers to respond to a call, he said.

Uribe said he consulted with Michigan’s Department of
Natural Resources and Department of Environmental Quality in
establishing the program and also worked with the Kalamazoo’s Public
Services Department on OSHA guidelines for the safety of the officers
when working at a lab site.

KVET
will spend about $20,000 to $25,000 to get the program going, Uribe
said.

He said he hopes the new
program and lower disposal costs will prompt more property owners where
meth labs are discovered to reimburse law enforcement for cleanup
costs.

The West Michigan
Enforcement Team, run by the Michigan State Police, also is looking
for a way to manage the costs of meth-lab cleanup. In 2010, that agency
had 26 meth labs and 45 sites to clean up, said Detective Lt. Mike
Harvitt.

WEMET seeks the
best possible scenario for cutting costs on meth lab cleanups, factoring
safety and cost effectiveness, he said.

Harvitt said he’s talked to other law enforcement
agencies across the state and they also are figuring out what to do
about meth lab cleanups with the loss of federal funding.